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Domestic Furnishings

Washboards, armchairs, lamps, and pots and pans may not seem to be museum pieces. But they are invaluable evidence of how most people lived day to day, last week or three centuries ago. The Museum's collections of domestic furnishings comprise more than 40,000 artifacts from American households. Large and small, they include four houses, roughly 800 pieces of furniture, fireplace equipment, spinning wheels, ceramics and glass, family portraits, and much more.

The Arthur and Edna Greenwood Collection contains more than 2,000 objects from New England households from colonial times to mid-1800s. From kitchens of the past, the collections hold some 3,300 artifacts, ranging from refrigerators to spatulas. The lighting devices alone number roughly 3,000 lamps, candleholders, and lanterns.

These salt and pepper shakers belonged to Leo Baekeland, the inventor of Bakelite, the first totally synthetic plastic. They are made of pure Bakelite resin, not the resin mixed with cellulose fillers, as was usually the case with molded bakelite items. As a result, these shakers are a pretty, bright amber, not the more subdued colors found in most Bakelite objects.

David Rittenhouse (1732-1796) was eighteenth-century Pennsylvania's most accomplished clock- and instrument-maker. An avid astronomer, he built complicated astronomical clocks and orreries, or planetary models, that not only kept time but predicted celestial events. These major works, coupled with his notable and widely publicized observations of Venus passing between Earth and the Sun in 1769, established him as a scientific leader and secured him an eminent place in the history of American science.

Rittenhouse was also a prominent citizen of Philadelphia, politically active on behalf of the Revolution and the new American nation. He conducted boundary surveys in the Middle Atlantic states and the Northwest Territory, succeeded Benjamin Franklin as President of the American Philosophical Society, and served as first director of the U.S. Mint.

This eight-day clock in a plain walnut case, made about 1770, reminds us, though, that Rittenhouse spent more than twenty years—from about 1750 until the Revolution—making clocks for a living. Largely self-taught, he incorporated standard English features in this timekeeper: the movement has cast brass plates and steel pinions; a seconds pendulum; an anchor escapement; a rack-and-snail striking mechanism; a second hand on the escape wheel arbor; and a calendar. The dial is engraved "David Rittenhouse/Philadelphia."

The lead weights, according to oral tradition, survived the Revolution while most others did not. Probably because they sympathized with the British, the family that owned the clock hid the weights in a well to avoid having them melted down for shot. Ironically, Rittenhouse was one of those responsible for the Pennsylvania Committee of Safety's drive to procure ammunition during the war. His duties included collecting the lead clock weights commonly in use and replacing them with iron ones.

In 1802 Simon Willard (1753-1848) of Boston obtained a U.S. patent for a timepiece as original as it was successful. The banjo clock, nicknamed for its characteristic shape, established the independence of American clockmaking from European traditions. Its design was perfect from the beginning. Vast numbers have been manufactured without notable modification, and its production continues today.

Willard's banjo clock was a lightly built, compact wall timekeeper, about three feet tall, accurate and dependable. It was economical to produce, graceful in appearance, and usually lacked hour-striking and alarm mechanisms. Weight-driven, it contained a small brass movement similar to that of the Massachusetts shelf clock, but further reduced in size and weight. The movement had been calculated so that a small drop of the weight (only fifteen inches as compared to about six feet for a tall case clock) would keep it running for eight days. For ease of maintenance, its pendulum was hung in front of the movement, not behind, as in tall case or Massachusetts shelf clocks, an arrangement that American clockmakers soon widely adopted.

Several thousand banjo clocks were probably built in Simon Willard's own shop. But he also freely permitted his numerous clockmaking relatives, former apprentices, and other clockmakers to produce according to his design. The signature on the banjo clock pictured here is that of Willard's brother Aaron (1757-1844). The timepiece features an unusual alarm arrangement on top of the case. The mahogany case itself is singularly plain compared to Aaron Willard's brightly painted and gilded pieces.

From its invention in the fifteenth century, the coiled steel spring became the preferred power source of European clockmakers. The spring permitted clocks to be small and portable, so most small European clocks and watches employed it. But the steel spring was an expensive import to America. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, and the introduction of the Bessemer process for mass-producing steel however, coiled steel springs were not produced in the United States. American clockmakers circumvented this limitation with ingenious weight-driven shelf clocks that were accurate, reliable, and compact. These they mass-produced and offered to ever-widening markets.

Joseph Ives, a Bristol clockmaker notable for his inventiveness but lack of business success, had first introduced wagon-spring clocks in the 1820s. They had conventional weight-driven brass movements, except for one feature: The strings that ordinarily would have held the weights were connected, through intermediary pulleys, to the free ends of what looked like a wagon-spring on the bottom of the case. This mechanism exerted a downward pull like the two weights.

When American clockmakers began to compete abroad with European clockmakers in the 1830s and 1840s, they were reminded of the advantages of spring-driven clocks. They vigorously explored various schemes for producing spring-driven clock movements without relying on imported steel springs. When one manufacturer in Bristol, Connecticut—Brewster and Ingraham—had considerable success with coiled springs made of brass, a local competitor, Birge and Fuller, resurrected Ives's "wagon-spring" design.

Birge and Fuller manufactured wagon-spring clocks from 1844 until 1847, when locally produced coiled-steel springs finally became available.

Once Yankee technology had perfected the process for mass-producing spring-driven brass clock movements, the small mechanisms could be made and sold so cheaply that virtually everyone could afford a domestic clock. Case styles proliferated as the industry rushed to satisfy the broad range of American tastes. Decorative novelties flooded the market. Fanciful figures with blinking eyes were among the many popular styles.

The "winkers," painted cast-iron figures with clock movements in their bellies, enjoyed great favor in the 1860s and 1870s. Made by several firms in nearly a dozen styles, they featured eyes that moved up and down through a wire linkage to the escapement. The first figures are credited to Pietro Cinquinni of Meriden, Connecticut. In 1857 he patented two figure-clock case designs: a man dressed in eighteenth century garb, who came to be called Toby or the Continental, and Santa Claus. Production began the same year at the Meriden firm of Bradley and Hubbard, manufacturers of cast-metal household ornaments. Movements were supplied by the Seth Thomas Clock Company and the Waterbury Clock Company. Figure-clock castings by J. Buchner and Company of New York and movements attributed to Chauncey Jerome also survive. The line soon expanded to include the Organ Grinder, Gambrinus, Topsy, Sambo, the Sitting Dog, the Reclining Dog, the Owl, and the Lion. The Smithsonian's Toby has an unmarked spring-driven movement with a balance wheel, the so-called "marine lever" movement.

Certain factors peculiar to the American colonies guided the inventive activities of colonial clockmakers. Brass, the customary material for clock movements, was expensive. The market for large, complex, and costly clocks was small; people wanted inexpensive, reliable timekeepers. American clockmakers responded by substituting wood for brass, designing radically new case styles, and introducing mass production.

The shelf clock, a distinctly American design, fitted conditions in the colonies perfectly. The Massachusetts shelf clock, or half clock, was developed in the 1770s, with the Boston area's Willard brothers playing leading roles. Massachusetts clockmakers continued to produce it for about half a century thereafter. It was in essence a tall case clock with the trunk left out, consisting only of a hood and base about three feet tall. Its brass movement resembled the traditional tall case movement, only simplified and much reduced in size.

The specimen shown is marked "Aaron Willard/Boston." Like his older brothers Benjamin and Simon, Aaron Willard (1757-1844) moved from the family homestead in Grafton, Massachusetts, to Boston around 1780, where he became a prolific and prosperous clockmaker. He retired in 1823 and turned his business over to his son Aaron, Jr. The clock is of a design that Aaron produced late in his career and apparently in considerable numbers. The clock is an eight-day "timepiece," that is, a timekeeper without the means to strike the hours. Instead it has an alarm mechanism that creates a rousing noise by rapping the inside of the wooden case.

Peter Hill (1767-1820) is one of the few African American professional clockmakers known to have worked in antebellum America. A freed slave, he had a shop first in Burlington Township and then in Mount Holly, New Jersey--two small, predominantly Quaker communities near Philadelphia.

Undoubtedly the Quaker commitment to educating and freeing slaves benefited Hill. While still a slave, he served a traditional apprenticeship with his master, Joseph Hollingshead, Jr., a clockmaker whose brother John and father Joseph, Sr., practiced the trade as well. Hill gained his freedom in 1795. He married, set up a workshop of his own, and purchased land in Burlington. He also may have continued to work for either or both of the Hollingshead brothers for a time. Hill never became rich, but his status as a skilled freedman in a Quaker community permitted him to live comfortably and work independently.

Only a few clocks by Hill are known to survive. The movement of the Smithsonian example, which dates from about 1800, closely resembles English clocks of the period. The painted dial, marked "No. 30/ Peter Hill/ Burlington," is an English import. The clock's walnut case is attributed to the cabinetmaker George Deacon, whose shop was only a few doors from Hill's own home and workshop in Burlington.

This highly ornamented, carved porcelain vase was made by noted American art potter Adelaide Alsop Robineau in 1910. Robineau was astoundingly creative and productive. In addition to her art pottery, she was a china painter and teacher, and the founding editor of Keramic Studio, a long-lived and influential publication aimed at china painters. Although she bore three children between 1900 and 1906, Robineau still managed to find time to learn how to work with clay in 1902. She was so talented and successful that a mere three years later she exhibited examples of her porcelain at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis; Tiffany & Company began selling her porcelain in 1905.

Robineau made this, the "Pastoral" vase, during her 18-month tenure at the University City Pottery in University City, Missouri. The pottery was an adjunct of the Peoples University, founded by University City businessman Edward Gardner Lewis as part of his American Woman's League—a for-profit organization that promoted voting rights, education, and other opportunities for women in the early 1900s.

This silver teapot was made by Samuel Casey of Little Rest (later Kingston, R.I.), about 1750, for Abigail Robinson, probably about the time of her marriage to John Wanton of Newport, R.I., in 1752. Shaped like an inverted pear, the teapot has silver feet and a wooden finial. The wooden handle is a later replacement. The teapot came to the National Museum from descendents of the Wanton-Robinson family. In the Museum collection, such household items document the history of daily life, families, and patterns of consumption.

Teapots were among the fashionable items that fit many colonists' taste for stylish possessions in 18th-century British North America. Among the prosperous classes, growing numbers adopted the genteel practice of drinking afternoon tea in imitation of the English gentry. Some Americans imported ceramic tea services, while others patronized local silversmiths. Silver was intrinsically expensive, and it allowed engraved decoration and personalized initials, as on this teapot.

Although Abigail Robinson would change her name at marriage, her teapot expressed her identity with her family of origin. Born in 1732, she was a daughter of Deputy Governor William and Abigail (Gardiner) Robinson, and her family owned large estates in the Narragansett area. Robinson's initials are below the family coat-of-arms, a heraldic decoration that identified the American family as descended from Thomas Robinson, an official of "his Majesty's Court of Common Pleas" in London, England. Such coats of arms were an element of English society's commitment to social hierarchy, the division of the population into the few and elite on the one hand, the many and the common on the other. Silver and other items ornamented with coats of arms testify that immigrants to the New World brought with them some of the social distinctions of the Old World.

Between roughly 1790 and 1820, American clockmaking changed from a handicraft to an industry. The principal setting for this transformation was western Connecticut, the principal product was the wooden clock movement, and the main character was Eli Terry (1772-1852).

Terry began his clockworking career traditionally enough. He acquired the metalworking skills to make brass movements during an apprenticeship with Daniel Burnap of East Windsor, who in turn had been apprenticed to the British immigrant clockmaker Thomas Harland. Terry's teachers for wooden movements were probably Timothy or Benjamin Cheney, clockmaking brothers from East Hartford.

Once on his own, Terry specialized in thirty-hour wooden movements for tall case clocks, although he accepted commissions for brass movements as well. Over a period of years, he experimented with many variations of thirty-hour movements, one of which is in this clock. The town of Plymouth, Connecticut, named on the dial, was incorporated in 1795; Terry made this clock some time between 1795 and 1807. After 1807 Terry's wooden movements had different characteristics. In that year he introduced large-scale factory methods and water-powered machinery into the manufacture of wooden tall case-clock movements. His pioneering application of mass-production technology to the clock industry and his highly successful mass-produced shelf-clock won Terry a prominent place in American history.